Alexey Brodovitch, Avedon, Penn, Wolfe…
Nearly as an aside, I was at a friend’s apartment last night and she’d just bought an issue of Harper’s Bazaar from 1946. While looking through it I just kept reiterating how little had changed, I mean, aside from improved films and printing technology, the content really remains the same. Actually the design, font, art direction of this Bazaar was more sophisticated and interesting and in a way more contemporary than much of what’s done today – the use of white space alone seemed far ahead of our time. It made me appreciate why Alexey Brodovitch was and remains so lauded.
photo: Brodovitch lay-out in 1945 Harper’s Bazaar.
Brodovitch, you could say, discovered or groomed Avedon, bringing him in to shoot for Harper’s when he was 22. Those two working together became such a seminal time for the magazine and for fashion that they’re now commonly referred to as, The Avedon Years:
photo: 1952 Harper’s Bazaar cover by Avedon.
Brodovitch incidentally was also Penn‘s teacher while he was studying painting at the Philadelphia Museum School. Later Brodovitch hired Penn at Harper’s for design and layout. Penn later moved to Vogue, I believe again with the function as a designer/creative, but Vogue’s Alexander Liberman had him do a photograph for the magazine, and the rest, of course, is history.
(Huh, interesting, I just noticed both that Brodovitch and Liberman were originally Russian…)
In this particular copy of Harper’s my friend had the fashion story was by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, who’ve I’ve mentioned before (here) as a notable influence on the early years or editorial fashion photography.
photo: by Louise Dahl-Wolfe for Harper’s Bazaar, circa 1950s I think.
And that last image goes back to my original point of nothing being new under the sun. Reshoot it on Portra 160VC replace the warmth with a little cyan and it might as well have been Craig McDean that shot it. Okay, not exactly, but you get the idea.
“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought;
what is necessary is only to try to think them again.”
-from Goethe’s Faust
Thanks, as always, for the history lesson, Mr. Mitchell. Very interesting stuff!
Well we all know that referencing the past is common among artists, photographers in particular. When I assisted, I can’t tell you how many sets I’ve showed up on where the photographer would have stacks of photo books with Post-It notes riddled throughout to show the ADs concept ideas. Made me wonder what Avedon/Penn used as a reference. Actually I know that Avedon mentioned in several articles that he used to reference the theater, but how did he bring in a tangible image to get everyone on the right page?
BTW, a few weeks back i went to a flea market and bought about six old magazines from the 50s through the 70s and two of the magazines had articles by Avedon. The first was a 1956 issue of U.S. Camera where he discusses shooting Dovima with the elephants and the latter was a 1975 issue of Playboy just after he had his exhibit of his photographs of his father. Finding those was a nice coincidence.
its funny that you bring up Brodovitch, as he was probably the strongest driving force that helped me decide i wanted to design magazines. And still to this day, i find his work inspiring. Also, I find it a bit serendipitous that i now work for Hearst, which owns Harper’s Bazaar.
Beer soon? 🙂
Terence – Sander and Lartigue were two other photographer’s I believe Avedon named as direct influences. Sander influenced nearly everyone, and his work continues to, so no surprise there, but the Lartigue connection I think is more interesting. I’d pointed to it here before: https://graememitchell.com/blog/jacques-henri-lartigue.